For info on machines that produce energy, see Power.
Units[]
Energy is a fundamental system in Planet Crafter and is measured in kW/H (Kilowatts per Hour).
Most machines require some amount of energy with machines later on in the game often requiring more energy.
Trivia[]
The real-life metric unit for power is watts, which measures energy per time period (1 watt = 1 joule per second, where a joule is a unit of energy*). Something that operates at 100 watts (example, an incandescent lightbulb) is consuming 100 joules of electrical energy each second. Real-life quantities of energy, in addition to the metric unit of joules, are also measured in kilowatt-hours, kWh, which is the most common unit used to measure aggregate domestic energy usage (example, total "power", ie. energy, used by a given house in a month), even in countries that otherwise use non-metric measurement systems. 1 kilowatt-hour is equal to exactly 3.6 million joules.
The unit `kW/H` is not kilowatt hours, but kilowatts per hour, which is a rather atypical unit that properly refers to the change in energy rate over time (akin to the acceleration of an object, where the energy rate is the velocity). In other words, a measure of 1 kW/h means that the power generated or consumed by something is increasing by 1 kW each hour. Since the in-game measure is directly measuring the static power generated and consumed by various machinery, without regards to any particular period of time, the proper unit would in fact simply be kilowatts, or kW.
It's also worth noting that, properly speaking, the label used by the game, "Energy", typically refers to a quantity (for example, the amount of energy stored in a battery), while power is used to refer to the rate of energy per time period.
- The British Imperial unit of energy is the calorie, with a conversion ratio of 4.184 joules per calorie. Note that the "calorie" commonly referenced on food labels is in fact a kilocalorie (or a "large" calorie), equaling 1000 calories or 4184 joules.
